Page 67 of Bratva Queen

I looked up the grand stairs and saw three pairs of eyes watching from the darkness.

“Alright, get in the car, I’ll talk to the guards and be right out.”

He bashed the doors open and disappeared outside, eager to get going. I turned around and walked up the stairs. At this point, Isabel’s sons were almost all teenagers. Misha was 14, Dmitry 12, and Ivan 11. My son, Maxim, was 10. Sometimes I felt like all I could do to be near to him was be near to his brothers.

The ruse Isabel and I had worked up—that she was dead and we weren’t secretly in this long-distance relationship, working to ruin Stepan from the inside—had gone on way longer than either of us expected it to. It turned out it really was difficult to build an empire and try to take another down at the same time. Stepan’s drug use didn’t just take away his calm composure, it made him a cruel, impulsive bastard. More so every day, we had to be careful with the moves we made, or we’d end up being the cause of the death of many of his and our men. That would make us no better than him.

It seemed tonight Stepan’s cruel impulsivity was taking over again and I had to make sure the collateral damage was minimal.

“Hey, boys. What are you doing out here? Get back to bed,” I told them quietly.

“What do you think he’s going to do?” Misha asked, looking down at the front doors with silent anger.

“It’s none of your concern, now—”

“It is!” Misha retaliated. “I’m almost fifteen! It’s time I knew what the family business is about!”

“You’re not fifteen yet,” I said, placing my hands on my hips. “Besides, even then, you won’t be invited to these kinds of parties until you’re eighteen, so get back to your rooms.”

“Can we play video games in our gaming room instead?” Ivan asked. He wasn’t oblivious to what was going on. I figured he didn’t want to be alone, since seeing their father in such a state brought back memories the boys didn’t want to remember.

“Sure,” I replied, moving down onto my haunches and touching each of them on the shoulder, showing them the love I knew their mother wished she could. “Just keep it down, don’t wake your nanny up.”

Misha took Ivan and they walked away to the game room, while Dmitry stood with his hand curled around the stair’s balustrade. He was staring down at the entry hall, the look on his face undecipherable to me.

“Hey,” I touched the back of his head. “Forget about him. Go play games, and when you go to bed, you know what to do?”

He lifted his eyes to me. “Lock my door.”

“That’s my boy.”

* * *

Stepan’s driverparked the car outside of an apartment building. It wasn’t a good area, there were lurkers and dealers hanging on the corners, but they all worked for us.

“What did this guy do?” I asked, checking the chamber of my handgun.

“He’s a distributor. He’s five months behind on his payments.”

I nodded, knowing what that meant. Usually, a distributor—who provided dealers like the ones on the corners with their parcels—could take a little while to get his payments in, what with dealers themselves being unorganized scaly cunts. But after a few months, it would be close to impossible for the distributor to catch up. The money might as well be written off, because no amount of beatings was going to make that money magically appear. It was time for the distributor to become an example.

“I only want Alek with me on this visit,” Stepan said to the driver and bodyguard in the front seat. “You boys sit tight and keep the engine warm.”

We walked up to the apartment door, watching as corridor dwellers scattered when they saw us, audibly locking their doors. Stepan was in no mood to knock, so he merely gestured for me to kick in the door.

I did so. Immediately there was a scream, a woman. The distributor I recognized as one that I’d had to deal out a warning beating to about three months ago. He shot up from the couch and told his wife to get back.

I stood aside for Stepan to walk in, already feeling sick to my stomach about what was about to happen. No matter how many years I’d been with the bratva and how many deaths I’d seen, it never got easier for me.

“Well, well.” Stepan looked around the room while the man trembled in his kitchen and his wife backed away into the small lounge. “Look who owns a nice little home, filled with appliances and nifty gadgets when he still owes me money.”

Stepan punched the man so hard he crashed into the kitchen cabinets and fell to the floor. He pulled out his gun and immediately shot the man in the head. I closed my eyes for a moment, then opened them to see a fast-growing pool of blood around the unmoving body.

The wife cried out with tears streaming down her face, then put her hand over her mouth and doubled over in heartbreak.

“Aw… It’s okaymeelaya…” Stepan approached her, setting his gun down on the counter. “I’ll make it all better. Alek, wait outside.”

“Stepan, this isn’t a good idea. You’ve made an example of him. That’s enough.”

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